Sensitivities
by bohemienne
Summary: The Beadle makes Johanna a very interesting offer.


Disclaimer: _Sweeney Todd_ belongs to Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

Author's Note: This is mostly based on the stage musical (there's a reference to "Kiss Me"), especially regarding the Beadle. The Beadle here is completely based on Ben Eakeley's portrayal of him in the revival tour. If you haven't seen him, what you need to know is that his Beadle is handsome, smug, and aware of his own power. He's kind of like a mob boss. He's also very threatening--violently and sexually.

And without further ado...

* * *

Johanna was locked in her room. It shouldn't have made much of a difference—she rarely left her room, anyway, and the closed door did not look any more forbidding than usual. If she hadn't heard the key turn in the lock, she would have no reason to think that she was shut in. But she had heard the key, and she had sat silently while the Judge called her all sorts of terrible names, names she had only heard in reference to the old beggar woman on the street. And now she was locked in her room because she could no longer be trusted not to run away.

The window was boarded up, too. That was worse than the door in many ways. Johanna was used to having the door shut, but the window had always been open to her. It had only made sense that she would see the man she would marry from her window. _Anthony_. She still reveled in having a name for him. He had been going to steal her away, but not anymore. Somehow, her father—no, not her father, fathers didn't marry their daughters—had found out about him, and the next day, he had taken away her window.

It was hard to wait, to see what he would do next. He had said he would lock her up where no one could ever reach her, as if he hadn't done so already. He had said she was not right in the head, that no healthy girl would have such shameful desires. And worst of all, he had said that there was only one place to put wayward girls like her. Even now, Johanna felt a flutter of panic in her chest at the thought of it. _Not there! Please, father, anywhere but there!_ But he had been deaf to her cries, to her sheer terror.

He had not told her where he was going tonight, but Johanna had a terrible feeling that he had gone there, to Fogg's Asylum, to make arrangements for her. He had only said that he had urgent business to attend to, and then he had locked the door because she was a lying, ungrateful brat who did not know how fortunate she had been.

Johanna would rather stay locked up in her room for a hundred years than be locked away in the asylum. She knew she would go mad in that place, surrounded by lunatics, and that it would not take very long for her to join them. She would let her sanity slip away, she knew, so she could fit in with them, so she could belong with them. Being alone among so many people would already drive her crazy, so she might as well hasten her descent and have their companionship.

The worst part of the asylum was the knowledge that she would eventually belong there as much as any of the other lunatics.

The clock downstairs struck the hour, the nine rings carrying up to Johanna's room. That clock was her only way of telling the time, since her father did not allow her to have a clock in her room; he said there was no use since the giant one downstairs was so loud. Johanna was not certain if that was the real reason, but she suspected that the Judge did not want her to know how many seconds and minutes and hours of life passed as she wasted away in her high tower. Or at least, that was why Johanna did not particularly want a clock in her room. She wondered, though, if it were nine o'clock in the evening, or if perhaps she had been sitting there the whole night, silently embroidering, and it was really nine in the morning, another new day that she would not be able to see. With the windows covered as they were, it was difficult to know whether it was night or day. The light that seeped in through the cracks could be either sunlight or street lamps; it was so hard to tell.

And then there was a knock at the door. For a moment, Johanna did not know what to do; it was so unexpected. It had felt like she would be alone like this until she withered away, as when her birds started to droop and die in their cages. She realized she needed to say something, but she did not know what. "Come in" was tricky, since the person could only come in if he or she possessed the key. "I'll be there in a moment" was also out of the question, since once she reached the door, she would not be able to open it. "Who is it?" would be too painful, since there was no chance the answer would be the one she wanted it to be. (_His_ name went through her mind again, making her heart beat a little faster.)

"Miss Johanna?" A voice she knew solved her dilemma. "I'd like to speak with you." She hated his voice. It was oily and it always dripped with false sympathy. She didn't know why her father trusted him so implicitly.

"Come in, Beadle Bamford. If you have the key, that is." Well, she couldn't keep him out if he _did_ have the key, but she could at least pretend to give him permission. It gave her a fleeting feeling of power.

He did have the key. She heard the click, and then the door opened. Beadle Bamford walked in and shut the door behind him, relocking it and pocketing the key. She hated him a little more just for that. She wondered if she should be worried—she had never been alone with him before, let alone in a locked room. But he wouldn't dare hurt her, not when she could tell the Judge. But then, the Judge didn't trust her anymore, did he? He thought she was a—no, she couldn't even think the word.

With added suspicion, she watched the Beadle as he sat down on the edge of her bed (she was slightly scandalized by this, but then again, her father wanted to marry her, so perhaps she shouldn't have been), facing Johanna where she sat by the window.

"We've never really talked, the two of us," he said when he had seated himself.

"No, sir," she said.

"Then let's talk. You know where the Judge is right now?"

"He did not tell me."

"That wasn't what I asked you."

Johanna paused before answering. Speaking the truth to herself was one thing, but saying it aloud, and to him, would make her fears become too real.

"I don't know," she said.

"I think you do," the Beadle said. "I think you know a lot of things. I think the little girl you pretend to be is just that—pretence. That business with the sailor proves that you have more…adult desires."

Johanna couldn't even look at him. He was right, of course, but he made something so simple and beautiful—the way Anthony had looked up at her, the way she had smiled at him with joy and hope—sound so disgusting. This wasn't about desire, she thought. This was about love and _freedom_. When she looked at Anthony, she saw the wide open sea, the unlimited sky, the space of years stretching out for both of them. So maybe it was about desire, but not the kind that the Beadle was implying.

"I don't know what you mean," she said at last.

"Don't play the fool with me, Miss Johanna. I'm not the Judge. I won't fall for your pretty little lies. I know what you wanted from that boy, and I'm here to make you an offer that should prove tempting."

Johanna didn't—couldn't—respond. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she would either start laughing or crying. The irony of it was that now, more than ever, she wanted to be alone, locked up in her room with no one to talk to—with no one to talk to her. Even that would be better than this strange interrogation.

"I'm taking your silence to mean that you're willing to hear my offer. You will marry the Judge, and I will keep you out of the asylum. That sounds fair, doesn't it?"

"And what else will you require?" Johanna whispered, a hysterical note in her voice.

The Beadle chuckled softly. "I knew I was right about you. Well, little girl, since you asked, I'll also require what you were so willing to give to the sailor. It shouldn't matter too much to you—it's not as though you knew him for very long before you threw yourself at him."

She wanted to jump out the window, but she couldn't even do that since it was shut up. It was unthinkable that she would accept his offer, as though she could exchange Anthony, _her_ Anthony, for Beadle Bamford—and all while being married to the man she considered her father. Johanna would refuse the offer as tactfully as she could, and the Beadle would leave her, and then—

And then she would be taken to the asylum.

And then she would go mad.

He could do it, of course; he could give her that protection. The Beadle had enough influence with Judge Turpin to persuade him to give her another chance to accept him as her husband, which she would have to do.

She looked up at the man across from her. He was not unattractive, not by any means. He was certainly closer to her age than the Judge, and having him on her side would give her a considerable amount of power in her marriage. She would have to give up Anthony and the boundless sea, but she would live a comfortable life with more power than most married women had.

It was certainly an interesting offer.

"Tempting, isn't it?" he said with an unpleasant smile. "I'd advise you to accept it now, as I will not be asking you again."

"Why?" was all she could manage to say.

"Because you're a pretty, young girl. Because I'm a normal man with normal desires. And because I _can_. You've never had any power, Johanna. You wouldn't know how utterly intoxicating it can be."

"And what about Father?"

"What the old man doesn't know needn't bother him. This could benefit both of us enormously, you realize. Between the two of us, the Judge would be completely in our control. Doesn't that thought put a smile on your face?"

"And I had always thought you were loyal to him," Johanna said, more to herself than to the Beadle.

"You're changing the subject. Decide."

For the first time since the Beadle has entered her room, Johanna looked him in the eye. His gaze was cold, apathetic. He did not love her like Anthony did. He did not even desire her as the Judge did. This arrangement, should Johanna agree to it, would not be about physical passion or longing—it would be a partnership based on the mutual desire for power. Johanna was not sure if this made it more or less tempting. She had become used to being an object of desire, and it confused her now that she was only a means to an end, and not the end itself. It was almost refreshing.

She took a breath, as if to start speaking, but she had no idea what she would say, if she would accept or decline. Beadle Bamford evidently took her hesitation as the prologue to a refusal.

"Wait. Before you say anything, let me give you an idea of what you're about to throw away."

He stood up from the bed and walked to the window seat. Placing one hand on the wall above her head, he leaned over her, invading any sense of personal space Johanna could possibly have. She had thought she knew what being trapped felt like.

"First," he said, "remember that the alternative will land you among the lunatics until that yellow hair of yours rots away."

Johanna shivered involuntarily.

"Second, should you refuse, you will be giving up the most powerful position you could ever hope to have. Don't take that lightly."

He leaned in a little closer. "And third," he said, his voice lowering slightly, "you will be giving up the chance to satisfy those urges that got you into such trouble in the first place."

Before Johanna could respond, Beadle Bamford leaned in even further and pressed his lips to hers. The contrast between this and her kiss with Anthony was startling. Instead of that warmth that spread from her heart to her entire body, all she felt now was an intense chill. There was another feeling as well. Caught between the wall and the Beadle's imposing figure, Johanna was completely trapped, and she realized that should she take this offer, she would always be trapped. Those two men, those two horrible men—they were always on either side of her, always enclosing her. The Beadle's proposition would give her power, he said, but he hadn't mentioned that she would be in the exact same position she was in now. She would still be caged by them, by the Judge and the Beadle, until she would never have the strength to fly again. He was asking her to lock the door to her own prison.

The Beadle had broken the kiss and resumed his position on the edge of the bed. "Well?" he asked. "Have you made a decision?"

"I have," she whispered.

"And?"

She looked him in the eye again, trying to draw strength from the thought that Anthony could still save her yet. But even if he didn't, the lunatics of Fogg's Asylum would still be better company than Beadle Bamford and Judge Turpin.

"I refuse."

The Beadle's face turned dark, and his fists clenched. "You, Miss Johanna, have just made a grave mistake. If that's your answer, then you belong in the asylum after all." Without another word, he left her room, locking the door behind him. The click of the lock sent a burst of panic throughout her whole body, and it took all her will power not to scream and claw at the window with her nails.

From her window, she heard the old beggar woman shouting about smoke and fire and the whole city turning to ashes. Soon, she thought, there would be nothing to distinguish between the two of them, and in their madness they would be as similar as mother and daughter. It was a terrible thought, but not nearly as terrible as an eternity with Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford.

On her last night in the Judge's house before being taken to the asylum, Johanna fell asleep to the sound of the old woman's ranting, as though it were an ominous lullaby.


End file.
